Lullabies to Pulverize: Justice for Jessie
by Quillon42
Summary: This is a companion piece of sorts to my Lilly Caul Vengeance story, in which Rick Grimes gets his own sort of comeuppance from a mother and child whom he left behind, in the most gruesome way possible, at the Alexandria Safe Zone. Song at the end not mine but rather that of Joshua Kadison; all due respect. (NOTE: This is the COMICS Jessie/Alexandria, not the TV one).


LULLABIES TO PULVERIZE: JUSTICE FOR JESSIE

By Quillon42

Amidst the ebb and flow of the workaday, walkadead mundanity that came with every calm morning, the rustler of revenants known as Rick Grimes would try once again to get in touch with and enjoy the little things. Just as a televisory twin of his in another dimension would derive pleasure from simply…providing for pigs in a cozy corral, or sending out words via walkie-talkie to a Morgan who at the time never mouthed any messages back…this more ruggedly-drawn Rick, he enjoyed scoping out the horizon with the one hand he still owned, and trying to scry whether anything positive might pull up from the distance to deliver them all.

It had almost seemed to happen once, just after Grimes's group had survived a shadowing by scrounging scoundrels known as the Hunters, who had sought after the survivors for the basest sort of sustenance imaginable. Not long at all after Rick and his fellow reckoners of this wrecked world had wiped themselves off from whipping cannibal ass out in the countryside, a mellow-mulleted fellow with a funky schnoz had alighted unto them all, insisting on his innocence and proclaiming a place where all in the vicinity of his heralding address could a most homesteady haven. All the Deputy's devotees had to do was fall in behind this man Aaron on his return trip to Alexandria, and they would all be safe.

Incidentally, when Rick and his retinue fell in with the Alexandrites, they all found it rather trying to become as assimilated as the community's forerunners wished them to be. While local chieftain Douglas did not find among the newcomers' number anyone as problematic as a rueful deviant he once knew as Davidson…it was still nonetheless a bit of a task to take in these slightly savage survivors. In time, though, the Grimes-helmed gaggle managed to get along quite well, with Gabriel as Safe Zone pastor, Andrea as a lookout quite lovely to Doug…and Rick as the trustiest beat cop constable, dapper down to a clean shaven look he hadn't assumed since the salad days, before said days went bye.

Wistfully the man sat on his derriere as he watched the dawn, he still trying to stay positive, but that part of him that liked to talk on the corded, disconnected receiver…that portion of the man musing now on the collateral damage that was dealt upon him most recently. Despite all endeavors to keep the Zone devoid of the dead, those putrid stragglers still managed to break through and get in, all in the course of so many milk runs for supplies that had originated from within the community, as well as attempted murderous raids on the same home base that had alighted from without. Between precarious phenomena such as these, the roamers had burst through the border, they all starved for the survivors packed like sardines inside.

Flashes of memories that flew across his mind next had made the man tear up like a toddler. He had of late shacked up with a woman named Jessie, whose cells were saturated with suburban, she never knowing the grueling, ghouly outdoors nearly as much as her new, American-wasteland-wayfaring paramour. She and her innocent stripling son Ron, in fact, were very much ensconced in Safe Zone life by the time Rick had reared his calloused ass her way. The most of violence that either had ever known were the escalating outbursts of Pete, the husband and father of the house. Not the greatest family guy, as the man's first name might suggest, Pete was instead a prick who started taking to striking his son at the slightest provocation. When the fool had indeed become too far gone in incidentally doing in Douglas's wife Regina, Rick was all too ready to deliver pistol-punctuated comeuppance to the man.

In the wake of this, one might think that Jessie might had reviled Rick, have shunned through and through this ranger of the ripe-returned. But no; instead of evading the man, she embraced him, insisted in fact on intimacy with him, the newly-late-Pete-widow jumping Rick's bones faster than a Frost had done upon a Summers before his erstwhile Grey had begun to cool in the ground.

(Sorry, wrong comics universe).

Anyway, Jessie joined herself romantically to Rick, and found bliss in all of this…for the perhaps three days total that it would last her.

There were those roamers now, rasping their way into town, raring for the flesh of those still alive in Alexandria.

Rick had a plan for all of this, as seasoned as the survivor was…the old "intestinal instinct" ploy of covering the self with innards of the undead to infiltrate and penetrate their ranks unassuming. But while those active in the Unsafe Zone that was most of the rest of the country, while they were pretty good at that game…Jessie and Ron were never even given an opportunity to practice. As such, neither mother nor child were trained physically or prepared psychologically for the prospect of pacing past the ambulatory expired while gussied up in their brethren's guts, as Grimes and Glenn and others in his number had been.

Just the sight of the sinisterly-slinking savages that were once human beings…it had made Ron run out his bladder right then and there, his yellow streak veritably showing in the stream of urine that undulated onto the ground. Jessie noticed, and notified Rick without hesitation that her son was not the sort to slip through strings of the doddering departed. Really, of course, neither was the woman herself accustomed to it.

So when Rick, leading a line of Alexandrians through the terrors, had first heard the screams of his most recent squeeze's son…watched him get nommed upon by those most necrotic…Grimes only tightened up his resolve grimly, and goaded Jessie to jaunt onward.

But despite her coital coos to Rick in the reaches of a couple of nights, the lady had anguished at Pete's punching-out from existence…and this coupled with the loss of her loins' greatest gift had caused a hole within her into which hope had plummeted irretrievably. All of whatever strength the woman had, it had left her by that juncture, and she wished in that instant only to join with Ron and Pete in the most fatal fashion imaginable.

(One could imagine Jessie's final seconds as being as horrifically hopeless as the last, despairing moments of comics Hershel…but much cozier with the crowding cadavers in this instance).

Yet still, Jessie held onto Carl's hand in their bowels-bedecked-brigade linking, she almost mechanically making herself hold on by instinct alone, she inadvertently drawing the douchey child into the same feast of the foul ones into which Ron was being presently ingested…and into which his mother was now also ushered, the lady too laid into now by the vicious incisors of the unloving.

Upon heeding the screams of his own flesh and blood, and determined not to lose any more of his own clan (as his wife and daughter had been so butchered, months before), Rick turned with hatchet in hand, and he hacked away at Jessie's wrist, hacked at that pulse-pumping part of an arm which had lain upon him the night previous, hacked at the body which had bidden him an abode of safe refuge and sexual release. And then, not unlike a qualms-questionable Officer Walsh on a parallel planet, who had left an obese Otis to be eaten while the policeman padded away to escape…Rick had run off with Carl in tow, leaving Jessie and Ron as victuals for those vilest of vultures, those most decomposed of dickheads in the sultry state of Georgia.

And now, now in this murderously misty of still-stygian early morns, Rick sat and waited, he on schedule to resettle once again, the man prodded once more by the premonition that yet another wanderer would wend his way along, he peddling the promise of an Elysium in which one could exist. And in a mainstream meandering of this tale, there would be a prospector of positivity with long, dark follicles who went colloquially by the very first name of the Christ that his stubbly countenance had so suggested. And said prospector would finagle Sir Grimes and the other survivors into a crusade for a haven called the Hilltop…with the requisite, given gauntlet involving a war with a massive man-mesa of an asshole named Negan.

Well here, in this reality…indeed, there would be a visiting upon Rick by a particular presence whose nickname began with a J (and then even an "E" and an "S"…)

("Jes" sayin'.)

But this visitor sure as fuck couldn't be connected with Jesus, in face or in fact.

A hand draped its fingers across the left shoulder of the hardcore honcho that was Constable Grimes. Thinking it was the maidenly meathook of Andrea, with whom Rick had cavorted most closely in time, he thought to turn his head bemusedly…

…when of a sudden another such hand had gripped him, all the harder and harsher, on the other shoulder…

…then both hands coming together, cinching around the cop's neck, cutting off his air momentarily as some kind of morbid magnetism pulled the poor man backward…then downward, thrusting the tough guy through meters of mustiness until the man found himself supine in a very synthetic sort of scenery.

Once the pull on his throat had relented, Rick could only make out shadows of his surroundings, he surmising that he must have literally fallen upon some sort of forgotten storage, what with the shelvings and…boiler, perhaps? that he swore he could catch sight of, ever so faintly, all around…

…and then a bulb of light burst to life above him, as abruptly would occur at the onset of a Saw sequel. He looked all around, and in his squinting gaze could still only note the shelves and the large mechanism ahead of him, nothing more…

…and then…

"Took the three of us some time, to set this all up…just for you, Rick."

The canny Constable fixed his gaze ahead, but still couldn't make out the source of the sound. The voice…it had a gravelly furious, yet gravely familiar ring to it.

"Oh, don't you go tryin' to nose about, lookin' to figure out what we're up to back here…

"You already did enough of that…when you wrecked our home a week ago or two."

The man could do naught but survey his immediate surroundings, he trying to make sense of them. Some kind of settling in the texture of whatever it was that dragged him down here…the sound of that caused Rick to wrench his head around…

…and rear back, reviled, at the sight of a rope composed entirely of Alexandrian, a coil built from the bones and other insides of some unfortunates who existed within the Safe Zone. Grimes could guess at the fact that these pieces of dead were once denizens of his neighborhood, as the flesh was very fresh which he could survey in the strand of humanity before him.

It was while Rick continued to gape on agog at this cordon of humankind, with its tether of tendons and ligatures of ligaments, that the threatening inflection emitted once again:

"We knew from Day One that you, and yours like Glenn and Andrea and such…you were all looking to score those weapons from our storerooms. Well, you might have gleaned your guns back, and mean MFs like Michonne might have nabbed her ninja sword…

"But y'all didn't nearly get all the knives out otherwise."

The gleam of the glinting, seemingly floating cleaver's blade was what Rick noted first…

…and then the face of the moldering mother who wielded the weapon.

"N…

"_No…_" was all the despairing deputy could manage now.

In a mainstream rendition of this miserable reality, Rick was spared the sight of a terrifyingly-turned Safe Zone sweetheart, as the square-jawed sucka-soldier Abraham had ended the lady's unlife abruptly upon discovering her. But here, in this universe…there was no military mockery who was there to save the survivor from the spectacle.

And now this jinni of jaundice that was once Jessie…she stood before the on-his-back officer, she ready to enforce her own jolt of justice unto her lover of only so many hours.

"Did you miss me, my little Constable of Cuddle?"

Then

[SKKKRRRRREEEEETTTTTCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHH]

as the squarical blade in the lurid lady's hand scraped the cinder block wall alongside her, sending a shower of sparks down to the subterranean floor.

Grimes would honestly have been better off with the Negan-noosing he had endured in the reader's reality…that yanking yoke which had occurred just before the bludgeoning bow-out of the gregarious Glenn.

In all honesty…what Rick was about to undergo would be markedly worse than the most livid licking by Lucille.

The she-spirit went on, unabashedly: "'Cause I certainly missed you.

"_We,_ in fact, actually…"

And then a rustling, much closer to the floor, making an already-rattled Rick start again.

"Now, baby, settle for a second. We don't want our once-again-guest getting too worked up all at once…

"…don't want him sufferin' no cor-oh-nary now…

"…that'd be the easy way out, after all."

Rick could note the whites where the woman's wondrous irises of burnt sienna once blared out, the milky film covering over the eyes now suggestive of putrefaction or possession. Here it seemed likely to be both, to the officer.

A pause by the proprietor of this dank dungeon. Then:

"You like to leave the vulnerable behind, don't you, Rick? …Like to overestimate the ability of your followers to fall into line, expect them to act just as expertly as yourself.

"You set an example, sure…but one that's dang near impossible to emulate."

The shambling siren slogged forward, she flipping the cleaver up, then down again deftly into her open palm as she proceeded. Each time the man petrified at her feet feared the blade billowing down, straight into his face.

"Even your eye-socket-shot son couldn't keep up with you, in either fight or flight, Mister Grimes…"

Another slippery flip of the cleaver, just feet above the frightened captive alive on the floor.

"…so how in the mother of FUCK was _mine_ supposed to?!"

Beneath the vindictive vixen, Rick shifted, trying to gauge whether his gun was still at his side. He hazarded a hand, reaching down ever so slightly…

"Aww, naw, man…you really think we'd let you on our property with that peashooter again?!"

This time the voice was far deeper—still walkerly in its waver, but definitively male. Rick opened his mouth to protest involuntarily, but just then…

"Now, quiet, honey…again we don't wanna make the man just…faint of fright and shuffle off and away from this plane of existence, not just yet.

"You know, Rick, it really was just like what you went through, at the prison, as you told me some nights back. What you did to us…it was no different from your runnin' ahead, while Lori and her little one fell down and went boom, after the BANG what brought them low."

A haze of fury filled the deputy at this…yet still he found himself strangely frozen in place…and pacing around him an Elsa of the otherworld who for certain was not willing to just "let it go."

"I mean, sure…it was mainly the fault of the fuck who pulled the trigger, let's get that straight. It wasn't primarily the one who ordered the gun to be fired, much less you…

"But you really could have employed a more effective means of…making away, you know? Then, as well as…much more recently, and relevantly besides.

"You keep moanin' and groanin' 'bout, oh, you're not cut out to be a leader, you're not meant for it, you never wanted it. And everyone all around, reinforcin' and stumpin' you up into confidence.

"Well, _I'm_ fixin' to _stump_ ya, alright…"

The cleaver came closer, menacingly hovering over the man's face.

"Yore phantom hand on the right side, in fact…

[SSSHHHHHHCCCHHHHHHOPPPPPPPPP]

"AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!"

"'s about to have some lefty comp'ny."

The monolith of a man who once could come through on a single set of manual digits…he would have measurably more of a tough time extricating himself from this now…as helplessly handless as he was.

And still, above his harried head, the girl going on and on, all the more gleefully now…

"Y'know, that felt good, it did…and moreso…it felt right. Just, even.

"Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…

"…fist for a fucking _FIST_…"

And this last careened, crushed into the countenance of the Constable as Jessie's right most righteously rippled across the pain-wracked man's features.

Then again. And again. Again.

"You tore my husband away from me!

"My _SON!_

"My own _HAND,_ and with your own fucking _HATCHET!_"

The once-brunette-beauty's other, available, balled hand bounded into Rick's face again and again, closing one eye for good as the man had done in a parallel universe with another Tyreese…but here too, taking out so many teeth from the grounded Grimes as well.

Finally, when the woman even in her withering state had wheezed in exhaustion, she let herself up, strolled around all straggling, leveled her cleaver at the deputy once more from feet away as a rot-wracked Ron and a putrescent Pete stepped into the light, to join Jessie and to rattle Rick all the more.

"And you left us all to die. And then undie."

She shook her head, lowered it, squeezed her rheumy eyes shut a second. Then lifted up again to address Officer Grimes once more.

"Well…I'm just about as through with my harangue, as you are with your hands.

"…Yayup…I'm done with the diatribe…

"Now it's time for the lullaby."

A few seconds later she approached anew, once more with the cleaver in her only hand. Behind her, Pete receded into the darkness again…and instants later a piano-bound ballad started to sound.

[DUM DA-DUM-DUM…DUMMM… DUM DA-DUM-DUM…DUMMM]

"This one's always been my favorite, Rick…

"If you had the chance…if you gave us the effing _chance_ to know one another for more than, what, _five life-wrecking seconds…_you might have learned of that."

What followed was a rendition without words, left for the lady to supply the lyrics, a karaoke of karmic comearound for the one who literally left her behind in the worst place imaginable.

As the woman hacked away headily at what remained of Rick, she forewent the first verse, instead focusing on the work most wondrous to her. The bare semblance of a boy behind her, he hummed it out, as he didn't know the words like his mother did. His father ambled over, patted his head, hugged him long and hard like he never did while alive.

Truly this was a family moment, if ever there were one.

When the chorus came, the lady was still at Rick's lower limbs, but she felt compelled to belt out in this magnificent, inspired moment:

_ "Jessie, paint your pictures, about how it's gonna be,_

_ By now I should know better, your dreams are never free…ee…"_

As Grimes had parted her thighs, those nights ago…now she repaid him in kind, by parting his own legs…

…from his torso.

_ "Tell me all about our little trailer by the sea…"_

Then, as she set to work on what had lain in between said legs…

_ "Ohh, Jessie, you can always, sell any, dream, to me…"_

What had seemed to be a boiler to Rick was in actuality metallic barrels, for making moonshine. Pete had a secret little microbrewing project going on, which he had abandoned when matters in the Safe Zone had become a bit more serious of late. The stress had caused the man to lash out against his son for the first time…

…but now, in this unliving eternity, Pete would more than make it up, to both his boy and his lady. Especially with what the three of them could pick clean from Rick here, pulverizing his parts down, then distilling them into the brewing machinery…perhaps they would all inherit the strength the deputy had all this time—even if by osmosis.

Her face bloody with Rick-remains, the woman turned, looked lovingly at her husband and child.

_"Tell me all about our little cellar with the sauce,"_ she crooned playfully, she then getting up to group-hug her family, tiredly yet warmly.

(Note/Update for 12/1/15: Special thanks to Matthew Negrete for writing the most anticlimactic, bastardizediest televisory adaptation, through 11/29/15's S06/E08 "Couldn't Finish What He Started," regarding the events of TWD 14: No Way Out that had originally inspired the above fan story. I tell ya, I really preferred watching fucking Deanna go on for twenty minutes with her scowling, scrunched-up "I olfactorily detect scatological deposits" face as she imparted generic and uninspired advice about "finding where you belong here," and then ran up to a bunch of Walkers to go "HURRR!" to them/the camera…all instead of watching, _in its effing entirety as it should have been in this midseason finale,_ the zombie-intestines-imbued Rick and Co. carry out their promenade through the undead, complete with hatchets and hacked-off wrists. Of course, as the above narrative bears out, the sequence upset me, and goaded me to write here…I still would have liked to have seen it play out nonetheless, as it was definitely one of, if not THE most shocking and effective moment in all the Volumes I've read (I've read up to 21 (All Out War Part Two)). Again, freaking kudos to Negrete; I really preferred this metaphorical coitus interruptus of a scene at the end, when the action of every other midseason/grand season finale, from S02's farm grand finale, to S04's prison midseason finale, to S05's hospital midseason closer, and on and on, had thoroughly completed all the action involved in question. I'll just continue waiting with something intimate in my hand for another ten weeks to see how everything plays out (most likely in some fruity-ass flashback fashion). It's okay, really.)


End file.
